


The End of the Beginning

by websandwhiskers



Series: The Unbroken-'verse (A Hellboy II AU) [4]
Category: Hellboy (movie-verse)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-07
Updated: 2011-05-07
Packaged: 2017-10-19 02:21:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/195781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/websandwhiskers/pseuds/websandwhiskers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nuala’s coronation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The End of the Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> Continues in the AU ‘verse of Unbroken, follows shortly after Surfacing. I’m taking some liberties with the canon backstory here, and assuming that Prof. Broom’s book of mythology had – as storybooks tend to do – made the story both more remote and a bit grander than it was, and that the creation of the Golden Army didn’t really occur quite so shortly following, um, the beginning of time. To me, mankind wanting to take over the Earth sounds an awful lot like Roman conquest, and the elves do seem to have originated in the British Isles, so . . that’s roughly where I’m pinning that, 300AD or so. I am aware that some of the elves’ names reference much earlier mythology, but the story we’re given in canon doesn’t match those stories, so I’m going to go on the theory that the elves just liked to re-use traditional names.
> 
> So anyway, that’s all really fairly extraneous to this, I just felt like sharing my ridiculous geekiness.

Liz had no idea what she’d expected of the Elven Court, but this was not it. 

Well, the crumbling railway platform wasn’t what she’d imagined – but some of the rest of it was.  Some of it was beyond anything she _could_ have imagined - the costumes, for one. 

She supposed she probably ought not to think of them that way – these were definitely not kids trick-or-treating.  Probably they were high ceremonial robes or old family armor or whatever, but it was hard to think of the red-clad figure now facing Nuala – the one whose headdress included a set of painted horns, and completely obscured his face – as anything other than costumed.  The stony-faced, bright eyed delegations of Goblins and Trolls and God knew what else that she couldn’t name, the agitated crowd they’d had to wade through to enter the throne room, it all reminded her a bit too much of a Renaissance Fair.  It was so unreal, it would be too easy to start to think of it as pretend. 

But it wasn’t pretend at all – these were not slight obsessive accountants and sales clerks who would take off their masks and go home at the end of the day.  This was a displaced and poverty-stricken population composed of refugees of a dozen different races and cultures who had just seen the end of several hundred years of destructively apathetic rule by a depressed, disaffected and borderline suicidal king.  This was a court held on land they didn’t even properly own (though Abe – or rather, the broker he’d hired – was in the process of sending them all into terrifying amounts of debt trying to rectify that before the end of the day.  Liz still wasn’t entirely sure why she’d co-signed for that one, except that her parents’ insurance money was mostly just sitting there and it was Abe, and he’d asked, and when had Abe ever asked for anything?)

And it was apparently Elven custom that none of this be planned or rehearsed or decided ahead of time; all the heir presumptive was permitted to do beforehand was summon the Council with the express intent of claiming the throne.  The actual claiming was a matter of the degree to which the heir managed to demonstrate his (or in this case – this first-ever-in-the-course-of-Elvendom, apparently, case – her) impressiveness. 

This was, in short, a powder keg to make the Middle East look like a tea party. 

“What’re they saying?” Liz whispered.

“I’m not following every word,” Abe replied, sounding frustrated.  “The dialect is unfamiliar, I suppose some sort of high ceremonial -” He glanced sideways at her.  “Sorry.  The . . individual in red, I gather he’s head of the Council . . he asked her to identify herself, and now she’s reciting her lineage – by their full, true names,” Abe said, sounding a little shocked about this.

“That’s a big deal?” Liz asked; she seemed to remember something about Fey being controlled by their true names.

“It’s a display of confidence.  Power.  And also sacrifice,” Abe replied.  “She puts herself at the service of her people, at least symbolically, though it’s understood that anyone worthy of the throne ought to be able to resist the compulsion to obey when issued by a lesser Fey, true name or no.” 

“Provided they’re actually lesser,” Liz guessed, frowning.

“Precisely,” Abe said, sounding somewhat less than happy about it.

“Are we thinking they are?” Liz asked, fidgeting with the snap on her empty holster.

“She has every right to the throne,” Abe replied firmly – which was not, Liz noted, actually an answer to her question. 

Nuala sang out something that didn’t sound like a name, to Liz. 

“The throne of my people calls me,” Abe translated.  “Or possibly compels me, it’s -”

He was interrupted by the Council officiant asking another question, voice full and ringing and composed of meaningless consonants, to Liz’s ears. 

“Who will bear witness to this?” Abe translated quietly. 

“That’s not us, is it?” Red hissed in her other ear. 

“Don’t think so?” Liz responded. 

Around them, the Council chamber went utterly, dead silent.  Abe provided no translation, but he’d gone absolutely rigid at Liz’s side.  It took an effort of will to keep her fingertips from sparking; she didn’t understand much of what was going on, but she knew the feel of this room, this moment.  She’d been in this moment before, more times than she liked to remember.  This was the moment when things could all go very, very wrong. 

“What?” Red whispered almost sub-audibly, something dark and wary in his voice that told her he felt it too, the tension, the way a dozen possible futures danced on the tip of this one instant.  Liz turned her head to pass the question, but Abe was already answering, quiet and terse as he could. 

“She said,” Abe whispered, “I call the Earth to witness.” 

Liz blinked. 

“She what?” Red muttered incredulously in her ear.

In the otherwise absolute silence, the sound of rustling leaves and crumbling earth answered.  Liz’s eyes snapped back to the front of the room, and Nuala; the Council leader had backed off a pace, so that she stood alone in front of the throne, eyes closed, head bowed, arms held a little away from her sides and fingers spread wide. 

At her feet, a tiny sprout of ivy was making its way up through the leaves, writhing like a snake. 

“Huh,” Red breathed. 

“Wait,” Abe murmured, and Liz felt something stirring in the room, like wind, like fire, soft and warm and tingling on her skin.  A slight breeze ruffled her hair, and she suddenly didn’t want to move, didn’t want to _breath,_ so great was the feeling of imminence.  Her hand crept to her belly, fingers splayed protectively.  She could hear Red’s breathing at her side, could feel the unease radiating off of him; whatever this was, it was making him uncomfortable.  It was making her . . she couldn’t say.  Aware.  It was making her _aware._ She could taste the flavor of sap on the air from the leaves that lay dead and crushed beneath her feet.  Everything was shining. 

The twisting sprout of ivy burst into leaf, and there was a rumbling around them, a vibration coming up from the earth.  It was no longer silent; the Elven Council and the delegations of the other races of Fey and the assembled onlookers were all murmuring, a hundred different tongues speaking a dozen different languages, and it suddenly occurred to Liz with blinding clarity that she was human, here, the only human – the representative of humanity. 

 _I’m witnessing this for my entire species,_ Liz thought, incredulous – and then the ground all around them exploded. 

Trees burst up through the walls, scattering brick and metal only for it to be caught by the reaching arms of vines.  They twisted and tangled up through the dilapidated structure as if it were made of paper, some as thick around as a person, pulling the shattered remnants of building in and winding around them, contorting to fit their shape and then swallowing them hole as they shot towards the patchwork ceiling.  It was deafening.  Pale, bare branches spread like crackling glass and then blossomed with new, yellow leaves. 

The ground beneath Liz’s feet writhed, sprouts of things bursting into full bloom around her boots, a tendril of something twisting itself into a grommet.  Red was muttering something beside her, probably swearing, but it was drowned out by the sound of the earth ripping open to accommodate enormous, crawling twists of root, mushrooms erupting up between them in clouds of dust, moss growing over them.  The vines had reached the ceiling, and Liz could only stare up in paralyzed wonder, trusting the vines to catch the falling rubble.  They did, reaching out like the arms of lovers to twine around one another, creating a dome above them. 

It made her think of Celtic art, knots – there was no symmetry to it, no pattern she could see, and yet there _was,_ for just a moment there was something there in the patches of churning grey sky and the twists of green and the fall of petals as things passed from flower into strange, bright fruit, some sense, some purpose – and then it was gone, and around them, all went still. 

The room was quiet once more, but it was a different room than it had been.  Liz was reminded of the death of the forest Elemental, but that had been nothing to compare to this.  The stone remained here and there, suspended amidst the green like bits of broken glass pressed into a mosaic.  The smell of upturned earth mingled with the scent of flowers Liz couldn’t name.  The dust began to settle, and petals and leaves fell on them, and then rain.  Slowly at first, in big, fat drops, and they quicker, it rained.  It poured.  The rain washed through the leaves and ran down the trunks of the new trees and flattened Liz’s hair to her head, and she just stared. 

The throne, which had been rusting pipes, was now a thing made entirely of ivy; Liz couldn’t see what had become of the furnace behind it, it was so overwhelmed in twists of something woody and tangled that bloomed a bright, bright red. 

At Nuala’s feet, that first, small sprout of ivy vine had woven itself into a circlet.  Its leaves had withered; it alone appeared dead.  Something in the symbolism of that sent a nervous skittering up Liz’s spine.  _It’s a display of confidence.  Power.  And also sacrifice_

Nuala exhaled, long and slow and somehow audible even over the pounding of the rain.  Her hands fell to her sides, and she opened her eyes. 

The room _roared,_ loud enough to make Liz flinch even after the spectacle she had just witnessed, the sound of hundreds of cheering voices combining into something that was almost a physical force itself.  Liz turned to look at Red, and saw but couldn’t hear him mutter, _damn._ At the front of the room the red-clad Council officiant bent and retrieved the ivy crown; Nuala ducked her head to receive it, and the cheers redoubled.  Feet stomped, hands clapped, and Liz’s head began pounding in rhythm to the raucous celebration around them. 

Nuala stood a moment, crown on her head, just letting the adulation wash over as if she had been born to this – which, Liz reasoned, she had.  The Council member who had questioned her knelt; she touched his head and said something that Liz doubted _he_ could hear, never mind the audience.  He rose and another came forward to take his place. 

“This will take some time,” Abe shouted; his voice was shaky, and he didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands – giddiness, Liz thought, and relief.  “She said we’re not to participate,” he went on, “We’re not to swear to her.” 

It wouldn’t have occurred to Liz that they might, but apparently, she mused, it had occurred to Nuala to give Abe specific instructions about it - and she must have known exactly what he was thinking when she did.  So, probably Abe had no problem with the idea of kneeling and swearing fealty. 

Poor guy was so, so gone, Liz couldn’t help thinking - head over teakettle – though the very mundanity of that thought seemed wrong in the setting, disorienting.  Abe was in love and she was pregnant and they rode here in a car and there were standard-issue BPRD boots on her feet.  With magic vines all tangled in them.  It was hard to fit the pieces together in her head; she really didn’t envy Nuala the task of trying to piece them together out in the real world. 

The cheering and stomping were winding down, settling into quieter, but no less animated, conversation.  Liz shook her foot loose of the little viney thing that had been attaching her to the floor and pushed her sodden hair back away from her face; the rain caught in her lashes and ran into her mouth, but she really didn’t mind.  She _noticed_ not minding, felt the oddness of that, but it was warm and clean and really not that unpleasant.  Not the same stuff she was used to, walking hunched down crowded sidewalks, watching it wash litter into gutters.  Which was ridiculous – rain was rain. 

Red gave his whole body a shuddering sort of shake, as if waking from a trance, or perhaps trying to dispel some unpleasant sensation.  He shrugged his coat up higher on his shoulders, hunkering down into it. 

“Abe?” Red leaned backward to speak around her, stone hand settling on her shoulder.  Its weight was reassuring, familiar and grounding.  It occurred to Liz, not for the first time, that she led a very strange life.  “Don’t take this wrong, but your girlfriend’s pretty damned scary.” 

Liz slid her arm free of his coat and elbowed him in the gut, though without real feeling.  She turned to glare at him.  “We approve of scary girlfriends,” she reminded him. 

“Hey, we totally approve of scary girlfriends,” Red replied immediately; Liz couldn’t help but smile.   


From somewhere behind her, Liz heard a renewed commotion, something that sounded a bit less celebratory.  She tensed; there was no need to point this new sound out to Red.  He was already standing straighter, pulling a little away, his case of Earth-magic heebie-jeebies forgotten - and then two of them turned, together, just as if there were gears between their bodies, two pieces, one movement. 

Liz looked up at him, and Red looked down at her, and for half a moment she knew that he had felt the exact same thing she had there.  There was no way to describe whatever they were together as anything other than really, seriously screwed up – but it fit.  It worked.  They worked. 

“What?” Red said.

“Big dumb ape,” Liz muttered, shaking her head, and turned away.  She stood on her tip-toes, trying to peer over the crowd; she could make out the progression of _something_ through the crowd by the commotion it stirred, but she couldn’t tell what exactly it was that was coming at them.  It wasn’t flinging bodies, anyway, which was a good start.  Nobody was screaming – though there was some growling.  Growling was really never good.  

“You got a bead on this, Abe?” Red asked. 

“A suspicion,” Abe replied. 

“Feel like sharing?” Liz prompted impatiently, then took a deep breath as she felt some of that frustration bleeding out through her skin into little dancing blue arcs of flame up and down her arms.  She momentarily closed her eyes, focusing on pulling the fire back.  Her hands itched for the gun she wasn’t carrying. 

“Ah, hell,” Red muttered.  Liz’s eyes snapped open. 

She could see something sticking up out of the crowd, something that looked like . . a video camera? 

And then she could make out human voices. 

“Reporters,” Liz said flatly, and tried to convince herself she could relax at this.  Reporters did not _technically_ count as incoming hostile forces.  Technically. 

“She was expecting this,” Abe said levelly.  “She wanted it, actually.”

“She wanted to be on Jimmy Kimmel?” Liz snapped. 

“When’re you gonna give that up?” Red sighed.

“Never?  How does ‘never’ work for you?” Liz retorted. 

They’d started out with good seats, but with all the kneeling and swearing going on, much of the crowd was now between them and the throne; a murmuring began to pass through that assembly.  Gradually they parted; Liz was jostled to the side by something blue-gray and scaly that muttered at her in what she presumed were words, repeating itself with increasing impatience. 

“It’s saying -” Abe began, tugging on her arm. 

“Let them pass,” the creature ground out in a gravelling voice, tripping over the vowels.  “Queen says, let them pass.” 

“Oh.  Right,” Liz muttered awkwardly, and tried to give the thing a friendly sort of smile as she backed up, grabbing a fistful of Red’s coat and pulling him with her – he was still trying to see past the rest of the crowd. 

The creature just grunted and stood up on the tips of its feet – all four of them – much the same way Red was.  A path was forming up the center of the room.  Liz couldn’t see much between the press of bodies, but she could hear. 

“Welcome,” Nuala’s voice rang out – Liz knew it was Nuala’s voice, because really, who else’s voice would it be?  That didn’t make it sound overly much like the Nuala she’d met last week; this voice belonged to the Queen of Fairyland, no doubt about it. 

“The messengers of Mankind are welcome to the court of Bethmoora,” Nuala said; she wasn’t shouting, exactly, but there was absolutely no question of her being heard.  “There is much here that must be told – much that I would have known to world of Men.” 

“Scary,” Red repeated, settling back down on his feet and pulling Liz to his side. 

“Isn’t she?” Abe replied softly.  


End file.
